The Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (SCTCT) Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Children’s National Hospital (CNH) provides one year of advanced clinical and research training to senior fellows interested in pursuing a career dedicated to the field.

SCTCT fellows gain extensive experience in a wide variety of diagnoses such that they become experts in SCTCT clinical management. Fellows are expected to manage their panel of primary patients from initial consults through weighing treatment options and provide longitudinal care through inpatient and outpatient clinical care.

By the second half of the fellowship year, SCTCT fellows have gained the expertise necessary to provide primary oversight for SCTCT inpatients and outpatients with support from the attending physicians. Fellows will work within an interdisciplinary team that consists of SCTCT faculty, hematology/oncology fellows, subspecialist consultants, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pediatric house staff, medical students, nurses, social workers, psychologists, case managers, nutritionists and other members of the inpatient and outpatient healthcare teams.

The second objective is to provide the protected time, infrastructure and training necessary for fellows to demonstrate academic productivity.

Curriculum
 

• Clinical Training
  • Fellows will split their 8 months of clinical time equally between the NIH and CNH. Both hospitals are large tertiary referral centers accepting patients regionally, nationally and internationally.
  • The patients we serve are medically complex and referred for many different indications. Fellows will be involved in both inpatient and outpatient management of a myriad of diseases, including:
    • Malignant diseases
    • Hemoglobinopathies
    • Inherited Errors of Immunity (IEI)
    • Bone marrow failure syndromes
    • Cellular therapy (including CAR-T, viral and tumor-specific therapies, mesenchymal stromal cells, and others) 
       
• Research
  • Fellows will be exposed to cutting-edge clinical and translational research, which includes multiple chimeric antigen receptor products, gene therapy, cytotoxic T-cell therapies and multi-institutional transplantation trials.
  • It is expected that each fellow will have a research goal that will be developed during their time in the SCTCT Fellowship. Fellows are provided 4 months of protected time set aside for completion of research projects. 
     
• Rotations
  • In addition to direct patient care in both institutions, fellows will be strongly encouraged to participate in rotations with ancillary divisions. Rotations will be tailored to the fellow’s future directions, including:
    • Apheresis
    • Blood bank
    • Cellular therapy laboratory
    • Donor search
    • Hemoglobinopathies Clinic
    • Immunocompromised infectious disease service
    • Inherited Bone Marrow Failure Syndromes Clinic
    • Leukemia/lymphoma tumor boards
    • Inborn Errors of Immunity Clinic
    • Radiation Oncology Clinic
    • Transfusion medicine rotations